Dead Like Your Eyes
by AlinaLotus
Summary: He was dead now, and nothing else mattered.


**I can't really explain this...*shrugs* anyway, here you are. Warning: this contains references to Inkheart and Inkspell, neither of which belong to me. If you haven't read all through Inkspell, I wouldn't read this. Ignorance is bliss. **

She'd never really believed in death. If she was honest with herself, she believed that one simply went on, perhaps not in their physical body, but the spirit, the soul, what really mattered, still lived. Even before he'd come into their lives--Dustfinger, that is--she'd believed that one day a handsome prince would come and take her far away, would pull her onto his white (or black. She really prefers the color black nowadays) horse and they'd ride off into the orange sunset and gallop onto the pages of a fairy tale. Maybe she'd have to deal with wicked stepmothers and horrid sisters, or gargantuan spiders and evil kings, but she could do it. She did, after all, have quite a supreme knowledge of what went on in books.

Farid--here is what Farid is. Farid is a child. He is not princely and cunning. He is recklessly brave sometimes, forever following in the footsteps of Dustfinger, and he comes up short (it's actually a long way off, not short at all, but he's not that bad of a boy, so Meggie cuts him some slack) of filling the shining armor that her knight, her prince charming, wears. Farid always is expecting her to return his idle glances, to hold his hand in the night and sleep close to him. But she doesn't love him. She knows that, and she wishes that he did, too, but she can't tell him so, because if he leaves her, she will have no one.

Or at least, that's how it used to be. She's not afraid anymore, at least not of the Inkworld, and she could go it alone, do it alone, if she needed to. But it's not necessary. Now she has Mo and Resa, and of course, Farid. But that's her own fault, isn't it? Her words were harsh and cold and angry, whipped more out of shock than anything, and Dustfinger couldn't take the pain of not having Farid in this world. Whatever (or where ever) this bloody world was, anyway.

But, well, he was dead now, and nothing else mattered. Dustfinger, he was dead. And it didn't matter that she didn't believe in death, that she didn't hold with the chains of mortality, because if his soul or spirit or ka was still here, still around her, she couldn't tell.

And now she hates it, hates this, hates them. Not Resa and Mo, because they only came in after her. She can't hate the White Women, they're only doing their jobs as Fenoglio wrote them to. And she can't even hate him, the author who had brought this whole mass of destruction upon her and her family. She really hates--herself. Because she knows she could've talked Dustfinger out of it, because even though he loved Roxanne, there was a spot somewhere inside him (Meggie likes to think his heart, but that is idealistic and romantic and those have gotten her less than nowhere) that was soft for Meggie. She knows this because he tried to save her, her and Mo, in the very beginning of this adventure.

She can't look at Farid anymore, because of the guilt and pain and anger that his presence now holds. But it doesn't matter because Farid can't look at her, either. They are lost, walking blindly in the dark, naked under the coldest blanket of winter, and it is because of each other. Because Meggie was immature and selfish, and because Farid was foolhardy and heedless.

Meggie wonders what it means, now that he's gone, means for her and her parents. She could live here forever, really, though she'd prefer to go back to Elinor and Darius, because she thinks it'd be easier to pretend he never existed, and if he never existed, then he never died.

But he did die. He is dead, and nothing else matters. That is the truth of it, the gist of it, Meggie knows. She knows he cannot be saved, that he won't come back, and her heart, young as it is, feels like it's been broken so many times and healed haphazardly, and it's still bleeding, still trying to comprehend the agony it's in. She feels old now, older than Elinor, older than Fenoglio, maybe even older than the Inkworld itself, and she wishes she could die, too, because it would feel so good to just fall to the ground and sleep, slip peacefully into the black and the stars and leave everyone behind, because then she'd stop aching and that's all she wants. It's like a new Meggie was born when her prince died, one who is pale as chalk and is mirthless and callous, who doesn't care for things anymore. What is the point of living if you can't enjoy it or feel warmth anymore?

So she huddles to the earth, to the frozen dirt in their camp, and covers her head with her quilted shawl, and she prays and hopes that she too can die, because he is dead now, and nothing else matters.


End file.
